As the U.S. Marine Corps commemorated the 40th anniversary of their historic victory at Iwo Jima, Roland Gittlesohn, Rabbi Emeritus of Temple Israel of Boston, Mass., shared with this reporter his battlefield recollections of that bloody struggle.
Gittlesohn, the only Jewish Chaplain of the Fifth Marine Division, landed on D Day Plus Two. Like the other Marines, he immediately dug in, to protect himself against withering Japanese fire. Then, during the first temporary surcease of the mortar and artillery attacks, he moved out to be with men in the fox holes.
HEAVY JEWISH CASUALTIES
The rabbi estimated that there were approximately 1,500 Jewish Marines on the island of whom at least 150 were killed and 400 wounded. The number of Jewish casualties may have been proportionately higher than the non-Jews, because of the large number of Jewish Navy medical corpsmen who suffered especially heavy losses as they administered first-aid under battle fire.
Gittlesohn spent five weeks on Iwo Jima serving Jew and Gentile alike. He recalls vividly trying to get a special Red Cross message to a Jewish Marine named “Herman” with the good news that his wife had just given birth to a baby; by the time he found him the new father was dead.
Mass burial ceremonies were conducted on an interreligious basis because “so many of the bodies were simply pieces of bone and shreds of flesh in sacks.”
A BOYCOTTED SERMON
After the victorious battle, the senior division chaplain selected Gittlesohn to deliver the sermon at the dedication of the 5th Marine Division Cemetery. All the division Catholic chaplains and most of the Protestant chaplains threatened to boycott the ceremony with their men if the Jewish chaplain gave that sermon. When Gittlesohn learned of this threat, he immediately asked to be relieved of the assignment to avoid a controversy that might endanger the senior chaplain’s military career. He then delivered his sermon to the Jewish Marines.
Two Protestant chaplains were so incensed at the threatened boycott by their prejudiced colleagues that they attended the Jewish ceremony. One of the chaplains asked for Gittlesohn’s onion skin copy, which he secretly mimeographed. Afterwards the Protestant chaplain distributed thousands of copies to the Marines, who subsequently mailed them to their families throughout the United States.
The sermon, entitled “The Purest Democracy,” the original copy of which is now in the American Jewish Archives in Cincinnati, has become what is probably the most famous Marine battlefield sermon of World War II, from which the following are excerpts:
“This is perhaps the grimmest, and surely the holiest task we have faced since D-Day. Here before us lie the bodies of comrades and friends. Men who until yesterday or last week laughed with us, joked with us, trained with us. Men who were on the same ships with us, and went over the sides with us as we prepared to hit the beaches of this island. Men who fought with us and feared with us. Somewhere in this plot of ground there may lie the man who could have discovered the cure for cancer. Under one of those Christian crosses, or beneath a Jewish Star of David, there may rest now a man who was destined to be a great prophet … to find the way, perhaps, for all to live in plenty, with poverty and hardship for none. Now they lie here silently in this sacred soil, and we gather to consecrate this earth in their memory…
“It is not easy to do so. Some of us have buried our closest friends here. We saw these men killed before our very eyes. Any one of us might have died in their places. Indeed, some of us are alive and breathing at this very moment only because men who lie here beneath us had the courage and strength to give their lives for ours…
“Here lie men who loved America because their ancestors generations ago helped in her founding, and other men who loved her with equal passion because they themselves or their own fathers escaped from oppression to her blessed shores. Here lie officers and men, Negroes and whites, rich men and poor … together. Here are Protestants, Catholics and Jews…together. Here no man prefers another because of his faith or despises him because of his color. Here there are no quotas of how many from each group are admitted or allowed. Among these men there is no discrimination. No prejudice. No hatred. Theirs is the highest and purest democracy…
“Too much blood has gone into this soil for us to let it lie barren. Too much pain and heartache have fertilized the earth on which we stand. We here solemnly swear: this shall not be in vain! Out of this, and from the suffering and sorrow of those who mourn this, will come — we promise — the birth of a new freedom for the sons of men everywhere. Amen.”
‘A DOWN TO EARTH GUY’
An admirer of Rabbi Gittlesohn, Charles Cunningham of Hinsdale, Illinois, a former combat correspondent of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch on Iwo Jima, told this reporter he will never forget how the rabbi went from fox-hole to fox-hole while the murderous battle raged. Cunningham’s voice shook with emotion as he said: “He was a down-to-earth genuine guy. Although we’re not of the same religion, he was a man whom I shall always revere and respect. His sermon was the most moving dedication to the dead I have ever heard.”
Gittlesohn, now enjoying an active retirement, is past president of the Central Conference of American Rabbis, and founding president of the Association of Reform Zionists of America.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
